


After the War

by purplekitte



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Family Feels, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Or being discussed without really being present, Spoilers for 3.3, Spoilers for Drg 50 storyline, Various other people and pairings making minor appearances, Weddings, ambiguous WoL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-06-16
Packaged: 2018-07-15 12:04:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7221634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Estinien goes on a quest to find himself, meets only marginal success, and Aymeric waits impatiently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the War

After the war, Estinien went back to the church for the first time in a long time. As a young temple knight, of course he had been required to attend certain observations as part of his training, but he had gotten out of them whenever possible, especially once his position of Azure Dragoon gave him more control of his own patrol schedule. He worshiped the Fury with every fiber of his being, in battle, and wasn’t fond of the clergy.

It was pleasant, now, to close his eyes and let the liturgies he’d known from childhood wash over him. He didn’t sing, but he drank the music in. The prayers had been modified, in the months he’d been gone. Hatred of the Dravanians had been a centerpiece of their religion for a thousand years. Now they prayed for peace, for rest, for hope, prayers that had existed before but hadn’t been popular.

Estinien felt unabashedly good as he stepped out of the cathedral and back into the sun, shielding his uncovered eyes from the brightness.

The armor made the man. No one pointed and said ‘That was the Azure Dragoon.’ He had a lance, he’d as soon have left without his own arm, but he looked like any out-of-work foot soldier coming to Falcon’s Nest.

Or perhaps a former heretic coming back into the Ishgardian fold, the towns people thought, when he laid an offering of incense before the new icon of Shiva, to complement the flowers he had left in Ayzs Lla. Tensions hadn’t disappeared between people who still remembered loved ones lost to each other, but Aymeric was making changes among all those in the north, not merely elezen and dragon.

“I imagined for a moment there I saw Ysayle. I was ready to die, but she wouldn’t have me,” he’d told the Warrior of Light when it was the adventurer’s turn to watch over his beside. The Warrior was an antsy protector in a different way from the others--always looking around for threats, for the other shoe to drop, afraid that things couldn’t really be this good, that everything couldn’t have turned out so well without that hope being snatched away at the last moment. Alphinaud worried he was in pain or needed something and would act to stoic to ask for help; Aymeric just expected him to run off, accurately.

“You did,” the Warrior said matter-of-factly, like this was something that just happened.

“That happens now?”

The Warrior blinked, and Estinien could almost see a glow of Hydaelyn’s light in those eyes. “I’m psychic all the time, so I’m hardly the one to ask.”

“I suppose if Nidhogg’s shade can return, it’s not so far-fetched. I don’t intend to make a habit of seeing things, but I suppose if it’s her... that wouldn’t be the worst thing.”

The adventurer shrugged. “I have no idea what the long-term consequences for you will be. I’d suggest you avoid Ascians. Ysayle, she wanted you to live. She chose to fight for your life once, and again. Can’t imagine why.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled at the dig.

The Warrior of Light looked past his for a moment, smiling off into space. Estinien knew suddenly and without a doubt that Ysayle hadn’t been the only vision the Warrior had seen. It really hit him how much time had passed since Azys Lla. The Warrior then had been raw with grief and rage, vengeance that had cried “I will see the Archbishop and all his knights dead for what they did and call it good.” Estinien had approved, had seen a shadow of himself in there. Now the Warrior smiled again, genuinely, and thought of Haurchefant with a happiness that was hardly bittersweet. Those who lived could learn to move on.

Bowing his head, Estinien prayed to Saint Shiva for peace and brotherhood. He slowly stumbled through a requiem for Ysayle, editing out all the lines about avenging the dead he had so loved before and wishing her well in Hydaelyn’s halls if not Halone’s, thanking her for what she had given him in life and in death.

Then he set out into the wilderness. That was always where he’d felt most comfortable. It wasn’t a requirement of being the Azure Dragoon to like solitude, hate bureaucracy or responsibility, disappear for months at a time. It was just him.

He wore the armor of a poor man now, not the First Dragoon of Ishgard, but things were safer these days too. Not safe, but the knights of the far outposts had time to seek bandits rather than heretic, kill dangerous animals rather than dragons. Estinien, despite his reputation, was capable of being discrete as well. He had spent years out here hunting the greater Dravanians, and that involved not wasting time drawing the ire of every hungry wolf in his path.

It was very quiet without the ever-present voice of Nidhogg, but not as quiet as he would once have suspected. Some things he’d learned while being under the wyrm’s thrall was that he was not terrible good at telling them apart, that Nidhogg spoke with his own voice in his own mind, and that many of the thoughts he’d attributed to the dragon were in fact his own. Empty now of both of their rage and hate, Estinien’s mind practically echoed. _No wonder most people squander their lives accomplishing so little if this is what it feels like,_ he thought, though he had a vague idea he was in a particular state of emotional exhaustion and disassociation.

He took up humming to himself, and was surprised how sad the songs he spun were. He had no great skill at music and the harmonies he tried for were hardly pleasing to the ear, but the dragon part of him knew what they meant and how they should sound, echoing dirges across the landscape. He forced himself to look deeper into the memories on cold, lonely nights to learn other ones. He found the song of Shiva and her war’s end and of the old Ishgard before the fall, dragon melodies of peace and hope, and hummed them in the cold Coerthan air. Even if this was a cruel irony, if they managed to screw up everything again, like their ancestors had, he wanted to sing of anything that wasn’t death and tears.

In Tailfeather--he’d never had much of a way with birds before and they smelled dragon on him now. But the Vath needed strong hands for their adventurers’ guild, so he volunteered. He knew he needed a new profession, but an adventurer--he snorted. At first he had worried he was signing himself up to fight for a living again, but he quickly discovered that the life of an adventurer involved more spraying bug repellent on fleas and picking people’s radishes. The damn moogles came down the mountain for crafting supplies sometimes too, and he didn’t use them for target practice even though he was tempted. How had Ysayle found them so cute? He understood the Deftarm’s stories that the Warrior of Light (of course the Warrior of Light was involved somehow) had laughed until in tears when asked about the glamorous life of an adventurer.

(He also remembered what fleas had felt like in the cracks between his scales. How annoying they’d been as he’d bit at them to itch, when his dragonets had neglected their chores to eat them off his hide with their smaller teeth and claws. He imagined Tioman would descend from Sohm Al to visit with Vidofnir to gossip about their broods if she had lived, and Vidofnir would tell her about the new doings of the insectoid infestation in the lowlands and how they were proving themselves helpful. He loved her, and kept forgetting she was dead, kept expecting to see her wings on the horizon again any day now. He dreamed about how Shiva’s hands had felt, small and soft and cold, as she used his scales as handholds and pulled herself up on his back, Hraesvelgr looking on indulgently. He remembered Ratatoskr like he remembered the sun at night. He saw things that weren’t there out of the corner of his eyes, ghosts of buildings lone gone to ruin and people long since dust. He remembered a body that hadn’t responded to his commands, except it had because it had done everything he wanted—sought vengeance, given form to rage, destroyed that which had taken his family away. He was Nidhogg and Nidhogg was him and he wanted to kill and kill and die...

He woke up screaming as often as not, which the bugs did not find alarming, unlike the hunters.)

In winter, he return to the Observatorium, and Alberic. He followed the caravans back, they always needed guards, but skirted the city of Ishgard itself.

“Father,” he said, wondering at the fact he had clung so long to the memory of his birth family when this man had been his adopted father for more than half his life. It had been so very long ago, and though he’s never forget, so much had happened since then, he’d met so many new people. Not replacements, not really, but true bonds of their own.

“I never thought you’d retire alive, but then I never thought I would either.”

“You lost the power by feeling Nidhogg’s influence on you and running, leaving my village to its doom. I ran forward without pause and the power consumed me exactly like you had warned, leading to a new war and hundreds more dead on the Steps of Faith. Who’s the bigger fool, then?”

Alberic looked away, then back at him. “I’ve never asked you for forgiveness, and I’m sure there are plenty who will never give you there’s. But here you are, coming to see me and calling me that. Go show off that you still have your skill, and I’ll lend an ear about what it’s like to have once been Azure Dragon and to not be anymore.”

He stayed there through the winter, drilled the young men and women who had barely fought in the war, though all had lost someone to it. He had used his lance in the wilderness, but it felt good still to show off the forms as they were taught to recruits. He did love being a dragoon, how it felt to move through the air just right. It almost felt like flying, then was disconcerting when a downbeat of his wings didn’t push him up again when he began to fall, but he got used to that too.

The heretics who remained in the wilderness and still hated Ishgard tried to summon their own primal sometimes--their Saint Shiva, or Lady Iceheart. The two blended together for them, even not knowing the full story of that the way Estinien did. He killed as few of them as he could. Anyone could change, he’d learned, and anyone could give up on a lifetime of violence and vengeance and spite someday if they lived to have the chance.

He feared the lady herself most, because he knew what primals were, but that too was alright. This image of her they summoned was all wrong. Shiva--Ysayle--had wished for peace. These heretics wanted war and tried to summon what they believed would be a vengeful spirit who agreed with them. They’d have been better off praying to Nidhogg himself than her, he thought. Though Nidhogg’s eyes were torn from him and he’d renounced the power of the Azure Dragoon, he could still feel a spark of that fire inside. Something about having once been the son of the first brood of Midgardsormr made him something just a little different from mortal, able to face a primal, like the blessing the Warrior of Light held.

Sometimes he saw the Warrior of Light in the distance. He nodded to the salute the busy adventurer would send him, acknowledging he had handled the situation, before moving to all the other primals out there that needed killing.

(Sometimes she dissolved slowly, looking less like the primal Shiva and more like the ghost of the Ysayle he had known. Sheets of ice formed wherever she stepped and his power wreathed him in flame that didn’t consume him in response, like he was some kind of thaumaturge now. He didn’t want to bait her, to fight her anymore, so he was never sure what to say. _What would you think of me now that I’ve renounced the hatreds that consumed me and scattered them like dust in the wind? What would I think of the real, living you?_ Sometimes she leaned on his shoulder and they watched the stars, when the night was clear. Sometimes she held him and he felt the most profound sense of peace for a moment, then guilt that this could never have happened, he would have ruined everything, if she had lived. His lips would stay blue for days afterwards and he’d find himself touching his fingers to them to remember what it had felt like to kiss her.)

He watched the movements of the Ixal. He met more of the Warrior of Light’s friends, Thancred, who accepted his rudeness with easy humor, and Alisaie, Alphinaud’s sister who’d gotten most of the sense from that family. They were in and out of the Shroud, bringing whispers of Ascian plots and Warriors of Darkness. Nothing to tell the Warrior of Light about yet, they said, though Thancred added that their comrade “probably already knows at least the general idea, seeing visions and portents left and right.”

Talking to Alisaie made Estinien miss Alphinaud, despite himself, and want to see how the boy was doing. He wasn’t becoming domestic, he told himself, though he couldn’t think of a specific reason that would be a bad thing.

Estinien found he liked Thancred, though people who were friendly and lied as easily as they breathed were usually not anyone he got along with. Perhaps because there was nothing malicious about the Scion, nothing treacherous, just easy flirtations with everyone he met and imperfectly hidden pain and loss.

The Warrior had mentioned a few things about Thancred and Lahabrea while Estinien recovered. The Savior of Eorzea did the impossible on a daily basis and never would give up on anyone who could possibly still be rescued. Thancred killed the tempered where Alisaie didn’t have to see, which Estinien understood easier. Estinien never asked for commiseration--Do you remember what it was like, for your body to not be your own? Do you ever forget you’re not him? Do you fear it when you go out there every day to hunt those who could take your soul again so easily?--and Thancred never brought it up either, even when they were deep in their cups together.

He returned to the Holy See in spring. As the lord commander of the Temple Knights, Aymeric had been able to live a relatively simple life in the barracks still, but the Speaker of the House of Lords needed more grandeur. He was a civilian now too, and had to show the way to dismantling the city’s constant state of war, while keeping up morale among those who only knew fighting and defenses against any new threats. He needed a manor fitting for his status and ready for diplomatic functions of any sort at any moment. He needed to excel at all the things the nobility considered signs of their high status, without seeming distant from the commoners. He had to seem pious enough to make people comfortable, while keeping the church in its new place.

Estinien snorted as he let himself in through a window and tracked snow all the way to the sitting room couch that he claimed for his own.

“You’re back.” Aymeric stared at him, frozen in the doorway. _What, did the servant who fetched him only mentioned a homeless ruffian had broken in?_ He drank in Estinien’s image like a starving man, like he had when he’d thought Estinien lost forever. Okay, maybe Estinien hadn’t given him much time to get used to him being back before leaving again.

“I thought spring would be a good time for a wedding. Thought you’d need a best man, if you haven’t found a replacement.”

“Estinien… Of course you’re still my best friend. But why do you think I’m getting married?”

“I gave you all this time to make an honest woman of your first commander, and you still haven’t made a move?”

He remembered Aymeric shielding her from a falling tower before Hraesvelgr took the fight to him. Looking back, it scared him that they could have died, but then... He wanted the rocks to batter Aymeric’s soft flesh and meager armor, he wanted to hear Lucia scream for a medic even though it was too late. He wanted to soak in her grief and guilt as the implication of what was going on hit her, before another of his children ended her life too.

“She’s lady commander of the temple knights now.”

Estinien gave him a pointed look.

“We’re not getting married. We care about each other deeply, but we’re not. Consider yourself freed of your obligations and able to disappear for another year.”

“You’re angry with me. Were you surprised when I left? What did you expect?”

“Exactly that. I’m not a fool.” Aymeric pinched the bridge of his nose. He had new lines around his eyes, Estinien noticed. “I don’t mind being selfish around you of all people. I missed you. I wanted you here, even if you wanted to go find yourself or take up ice fishing or whatever it was you were doing.”

It wasn’t in Estinien’s nature to apologize. “I’d think by now you could do a good enough job of imagining what I would say in any given situation--something rude and unflattering--that you wouldn’t need me in person to cause trouble for you.”

Aymeric stalked over to him, half leaning down to him and half pulling him up to wrap his arms around him in a tight embrace. Aymeric didn’t let go for too long, held him and wound a hand in his hair.

Estinien knew, oh Halone he knew, and he had run from it. _The lord commander carried you from the battlefield in his arms,_ they’d told him. _He hardly left your side even to sleep until you woke._ The Warrior of Light told him, _He was ready to kill you even if it broke his heart, as surely as you begged to be allowed to die. I couldn’t let either of you do that, for his sake let alone yours._

“I suppose I’ll stick around a few weeks, remind you why you like me out of your hair. I doubt I’ll be away so long next time, unless I find a new profession that suits me.”

“Who’s beating around the bush now?”

“Still you. Say, Aymeric. Say anything you want to.”

“I love you. Marry me. Stay with me.”

Estinien swallowed hard and knew Aymeric could feel it. “I want you. I don’t want the job of being your husband. You’ve seen me as a public figure before, and I haven’t changed that much. You’re the best thing that ever happened to Ishgard, and I won’t let you chose me over it.”

“I won’t give up one for another. I won’t compromise. I’m going to win everything and lose nothing, just this once.”

“You could do better. You’re too honorable to have a man on the side, but I’d be that for you.”

“I want you. I want you, who will duck out of state functions whether you have an excuse or not. I want you who will insult everyone regardless of rank. I want you to scandalize the nobility with your rural peasant accent. I want you, who will elusive jump your way out of social situations you don’t want to deal with out the nearest window. I want you who will kill anyone who hurts me out of sheer reflex, even when I’d rather you not. I want you who will start fights with every person who calls you a heretic or a traitor for what happened to you, or a coward or a burnt-out has-been for retiring. I want you who understands what it’s like to hate that much and to not know what to do with yourself now that the fighting’s over. I want you who consorts with heretics, and who knows the name of every hatchling of Nidhogg’s brood still out there and sometimes forgets they’re not your own. I want you who will get angry with me and fight with me and skip town for a week until we’ve cooled off. I know what I’m getting into.”

“How have you not burned the city down yet?”

“Kiss me,” Aymeric told him in his best commander voice.

“Since when do I take orders?”

“When it’s what you want,” said Aymeric as he pulled him in, and Estinien proved him right by closing the rest of the distance.

Aymeric held nothing back. He kissed like he could condense a year of longing into a moment, like he could keep Estinien in place forever if he just kept kissing him. Estinien couldn’t call that untrue, not when he wanted to kiss back so much. He was the unlikable one, the one who only knew how to kill, while Aymeric was graceful and charming and beautiful and good while being no less strong. Yet, for some reason, he was the person Aymeric had chosen to run after, as long as they’d known each other.

This had been easier when they’d been younger. Casual, friendly, nothing to tie them down. Estinien then would never, ever have said yes to anything more, because his revenge was an all-consuming passion that defined his life and he would not be distracted or held back. Aymeric had found other priorities: politics, reform, administration. They’d been lovers from time to time, but marriage?

Estinien pulled Aymeric down onto the couch on top of him, and it was an acquiescence when Aymeric showed every sign of being willing to sit on him indefinitely so he didn’t vanish. It was good to have Aymeric there from his point of view too—solid and present and real, rather than a dream or a shade. But if he’d put off saying it a year, he could put it off a few minutes longer.

“I think there may have been some complements mixed in there. You’re losing your touch.”

“Mm,” Aymeric replied eloquently, kissing his forehead, his cheeks, his neck, before returning to his lips. They kissed wet and sloppy, enthusiasm getting in the way of remembering technique.

Estinien knew what he wanted and went about getting it. Impulsive as ever, he ignored Aymeric’s unreasonable ideas and shifted his hips to let him settle between his legs. “I missed you too,” he admitted, as Aymeric knelt over him and bit a darkening mark on his neck and his hands dropped from shoulders to hips.

Then Estinien was left blinking in confusion as Aymeric pulled back, and Aymeric was already to the door before it got through to him that his body was straining against nothing. Aymeric’s eyes watched his closely, while he otherwise made a show of ignoring him. “’Tis late for my next meeting already. My consort might accompany me to dinner with Baroness de Jervaint, but the mere former Azure Dragoon would need his own invitation and hasn’t been around to rate one, now has he?”

“I’ll kill you!” Estinien yelled down the hall, and Aymeric’s laughter drifted back in return as he walked away.

It was a summer wedding after all, nearly autumn at that with all the politics. Once they’d decided to do it, Estinien felt free to complain the entire time that they should just elope, and let Aymeric handle everything. Showed him right.

The day was as clear and blue as they could have hoped for, rare enough even in summer. The ceremony had to be held outside, lest they deal with the logistic or theological implications of fitting Vidofnir and Vedrfolnir in a church. Alphinaud nearly misplaced the rings, panicked, and Alisaie found them. Lucia beamed at both of them so proudly from her position as Aymeric’s maid of honor that the late Haurchefant would have had a hard time outdoing her. Edmont de Fortemps stood in as Aymeric’s father, as Alberic did for Estinien—It was the Ishgardian way, when not having a living father by blood was common as otherwise. The other leaders of the Alliance and the remaining Scions made their polite congratulations. The Warrior of Light cried openly.

“I’m so glad to have you back, my love, and to tie the knot to keep you.”

“I’m not leaving again.” Estinien couldn’t help but smirk against Aymeric’s lips, but well, he could only promise so much. “At least, not for long.”

**Author's Note:**

> At the wedding reception, Midgardsormr, Alberic, and Edmont got drunk together and complained about their kids. A wandering minstrel tried to give a performance about the Dragonsong War and a man who’d been a dragon man who’d been a dragon who’d burned a lot of people and thatched-roofed cottages, and the Warrior of Light tackled him and punched him repeatedly, apropo of nothing.


End file.
